1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a color balance correction on an image, and more particularly, to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method and an image processing system of performing a color balance correction according to a tendency of a color cast which may occur in an image.
2. Related Art
For example, when an image is generated by an image capturing operation of a digital still camera, there may occur a color cast that a particular color has an influence on the entire image because of a light source during the image capturing operation. In general, a color balance correction is performed to correct the color cast for an image.
In connection with the color balance correction on the image, JP-A-2002-44469 discloses a technique in which color correction is made to express natural human skin color and to obtain good color balance of the entire image. This technique is to make the color correction using not correction amount by use of which the human skin color expressed in the image becomes ideal human skin color, but correction amount calculated by multiplying a difference between the human skin color expressed in the image and the ideal human skin color by a constant reduction coefficient. With this color correction, the human skin color expressed in the image is corrected to approximate to the ideal human skin color, and since reduced correction amount is used, an image of which excellent color balance is maintained can be output to an image output apparatus.
However, in the above related technique, the reduction coefficient is set to match an image output characteristic of a particular image output apparatus. Accordingly, if a different image output apparatus having an image output characteristic different from that of the particular image output apparatus is used, it is not guaranteed that the color balance is excellently corrected, which may result indifference in image quality between images outputted from both apparatuses.